Marketing

Set Your Sails

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“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.”  – Jim Rohn

The economy is front, middle and back page news these days. Debt ceilings, the declining dollar and defaults are all we keep hearing about.

And lets face it;  the economy is in shambles. Experts across the country and around the globe are saying that a crisis is unavoidable at this stage.

Now I’m no economics expert, but I’m forced to concur.

The truth is, you and I can’t do much about America’s economy as a whole. The problem is just too big.

I’m not saying that to convince you to throw up you hands and take a fatalistic mentality. Quite the contrary.  Any good coach will tell you not to get caught up in things you have no control over, but to focus on what you can control.

So here’s the question that really matters: how’s YOUR economy?

You can get bogged down about the macroeconomic situation, but you should be more worried about protecting your personal microeconomy.

2011 has been my most profitable year yet as a copywriter. While so many of my colleagues are complaining about taking a hit, having difficulty finding gigs. On the other hand, right now, I have a waiting list for clients who want to work with me.

I’m not saying that to brag, believe me. I bring it up because if I can do it, so can you.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you a few insights into why my economy is not currently reflecting what we’re seeing in the economy at large.

1.) I’m continuing to give. So many businesses are clenching their fists, holding back what they could be sharing, for fear of being ripped off. Or, instead of taking the time to nurture leads and develop relationships, they are rushing the selling process.

Give as much value as you can. Giving information (in a strategic fashion) will firmly establish you as an expert, as an individual or business that cares about it’s customers and communities.

2.) Positioning. Don’t get caught in the death spiral of commoditization. You absolutely must be unique, especially during a downturn like we’re facing now. If your competitors can honestly make the same claims that you make about your business, you can only compete with them on price. You don’t really want to do that, do you?

Find your own unique selling proposition/competitive advantage and make sure your target audience knows why you’re a smarter choice than the other guy.

3.) Don’t react in fear. Define a plan of attack and be proactive. What do you want to achieve? Who do you want to work with? What  account are you aiming for? What do you have to do to get it?

Fear is killing your competitors.

Remember: “The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” (George Bernard Shaw)

4.) Find out what your audience wants and help them get it.

5.) Don’t be afraid to negotiate confidently.

By all means, seek to understand the big picture. But also understand that no matter what the economy at large is like, there are always some people who are winning. Put yourself in a place to be one of the victors.

7 Email Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

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Nowadays, I don’t spend very much time on LinkedIn Answers, but the other day I saw a question that I could help out with.

The question: What should never be included in an email marketing campaign?

My (slightly modified) response: 
1) Don’t make claims without proof. Skepticism is at an all time high. Everyone is scared of getting burned. If you make claims that you don’t back up in the body of the email, you’re setting your campaign up to fail.

2) Never use deception.

3) Generic language is a bad idea. Craft your message so that you’re talking to ONE PERSON. Be as specific & vivid as possible.

4) Don’t use untintelligible language. Overly technical terminology can kill a sales message especially in B2C campaigns. Refrain from using jargon unless you know for sure your audience will understand.

Confused customers don’t buy.

Use the language that your readers use in their own conversations.

5) Avoid links to unrelated sites. If the body of the email is about consumer electronics, don’t insert links to a Viagra vendor.

5.1) Don’t use any links or make any reference whatsoever to Viagra.

6) The copy should not focus on YOU (the sender). It really shouldn’t even be about your product or service. Rather, speak about the recipient and his/her needs/wants and how your offering can satisfy those desires.

7) Each email should try to accomplish ONE objective. You lose readership when you go off in too many directions.

Direct mail legend Dick Benson once said that “you cannot sell two things at once.” Choose one thing.

That’s what autoresponder sequences are for. Multiple emails allow you to focus on or sell more than one product or service
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P.S. If at all possible, the emails should come from a recognizable sender. Even non-spam messages look like spam if they’re sent from strangers.

If you’re emailing cold, attach/associate yourself with someone your list knows and trusts/

You Need Help

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I think my fees are very reasonable, but from time to time potential clients have accused me of charging too much for my copywriting services.

Yes, it’s true; you can hire a writer on Elance to write your sales page for $20. But chances are, you’ll get what you pay for.

Price is what you pay; value is what you get.

This morning my buddy John Breese sent me an example of someone who should have put more thought into who they put in charge of writing their copy.

This is a real example taken from a real website:

Can Everyone Take Creatine?

It appears so. I have seen no major problems with creatine reported in the literature, even in long-term studies. Yet, just to be safe, anyone with diabetes or kidney dysfunction should probably avoid creatine until further long-term studies are done. Some people do experience bad breath, flatulence, cramping or an upset stomach with high doses. If cramping occurs, just drink more water; for an upset stomach just ingest less creatine. Bad breath and flatulence are babyboomers’ companions anyway, so big deal. Take some mints and stay out of crowded rooms.

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Here’s the real truth: no matter how much this copy cost (even if the site owner wrote it himself for $0), it was too expensive.

If your marketing or website copy looks like this, please get some professional help, before you lose anymore customers.

U of You: Why Education Matters More Than Ever

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Education has never been more important than it is at this moment. Your parents always told you to get your education. Every year your teachers prepared and encouraged you to continue down the path to higher levels education.

Repeat: education is more important now than it has ever been. But not for the reasons that have been drilled into your mind.

I was watching television the other afternoon during one of my rare couch-potato moments. My brilliant wife pointed out that there was an advertisement for a college or university during every commercial break. Apparently getting a degree is big business these days.

The lessons you learn when you understand what’s really going on here can transform your business.

Let’s get right to the point, shall we? Here are 4 crucial insights:

1.  People value education. But why? Do they want to know more for the sake of knowing more? Of course not! People want to learn so they can get what they want. More. Faster. More easily.

Why does anyone go to college? If this were Family Feud, the number one answer would be “To get a good job.” Simply put, people seek educations to get what they want in life.

2.  Schools are rarely short on students. Good schools have people fighting to get in.

3.  Some of the most trusted individuals in any community are its teachers. Professors are acknowledged experts in their fields.

4.  Educators shape the way their students understand the world.

Now, I’m not telling you to go back to school. In fact, I believe the way the modern school system is structured is radically flawed.

Can you see how the 4 lessons above can apply to your business?

I’ll say it one more time: education is more important than ever. Your potential customers are constantly looking for information. Why? So they can get what they want. More. Faster. More easily.

How do you differentiate yourself from the competition? Better yet, how do you rise above the rest of the pack to become, not the best, but the only person your prospects want to deal with?

The most powerful way to accomplish this feat is to become the educator in your niche. Establish the University of You!

By setting yourself or your company up as the source of quality information and/or training, you have gained all the advantages that Harvard or Yale have. You are the expert. Trust is easier to gain, even from skeptics, because of the credibility you’ve built. Your “marketshare” of people seeking knowledge in your field will increase naturally and dramatically.

And you will have the opportunity to really influence the people you communicate with. Think about it— who has had a greater impact on your life, a teacher/mentor or a salesperson? (Not to diminish the importance of selling!)

There are more benefits to educating your prospects than can be covered here. If you’re ready to start reaping those benefits, consider the “Ivy League” approach to doing business. No degree is required. Just start taking action today.

Not All Marketers Are Liars

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While I’m posting social media conversations on my blog, here’s a few tweets that I exchanged with a guy I follow yesterday:

IJR: The world has become such a easy place to market to; sell them lies and they will buy it… Give them truth and they will shun it…

Sell them lies: Diet pills, shakes, body braces, etc and they will buy… Sell them truth: More vegs + exercise and they will shun it

Me: it’s not necessarily truth they shun. It’s WORK.

The world is so easy to market to, not because people buy lies (although they do), but because they want ease.

That’s why grown men buy clip-on ties, why most of us don’t cook food from scratch. Make life easier & marketing gets easier
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Marketers and salespeople can use deception to get sales, no doubt about it. A lot of people do. It’s a bad idea, but it can work in the short-term…

For that reason, a large percentage of us automatically distrust salespeople and think of advertisements as mostly fantasy (or at least puffery).

But truth sells, too. It’s a little harder to dig out truth than to make up stories, but truth-telling is a much more intelligent, more sustainable business model.

The Oldest Webinar Promotion Advice Yet

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Webinars are becoming increasingly important as communication and marketing tools. How many webinar invitations or notifications are sitting in your inbox right now? I bet there’s more than one…

One of the big challenges webinar promoters have is getting people to register for their webinars.

In my first post on Roger Courville’s blogsite, The Virtual Presenter, I reach back a few centuries to unearth principles of persuasion from a seemingly unlikely source.

If you’re struggling to get your audience to sign up for your webinars, read “Aristotle’s Advice.”

Actually, the concepts apply across all manners of influence. You might want to read the article even if you never intend to host a presentation online.

Is Marketing Getting Too Relevant?

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Is it possible to be too relevant?

Apparently that is something that Staples fears. Take a look at the Unsubscribe Email page:

Too Relevant

It’s small, so you may have difficulty reading the words in the image. Listed are the different reasons people may want to opt-out of receiving emails from Staples. The circled reason says “Staples emails are too relevant (feel watched).”

This inspires a question — is marketing getting to be too targeted?

(By the way, if you’d like to make your email marketing more relevant — without getting creepy — you may want to take a look at Emails That Make Sales.)

The Myth of Selling Without Selling

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It seems like nobody likes sales people (at least when they’re customers), and “sales” seems like a dirty word these days. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Nothing I can think of sells without selling. Not even candy bars in vending machines.

Let’s explore that thought experiment for a moment. Imagine one of those vending machines with the glass front that allows you to see its contents. In this one, all the merchandise is packaged in identical, completely nondescript containers. Perfectly cube-shaped, unmarked cardboard boxes.

You have no clue what’s inside any of them. Could be anything.

When you happen across this vending machine, what are you going to buy? Will you press A1 or E7?

I’m willing to bet you’ll choose to keep the dollar in your pocket.

Why? Because nothing is being sold. It’s just there. It’s available for sale, but it’s not being sold.

Now let’s imagine the vending machine is in the middle of a sweltering desert. There’s nothing else in sight but sand and scorpions. And you’re getting really, really thirsty.

What do you do now? Remember, you can’t tell what’s in any of those containers. Might be bottled water, or a bag of cheese curls. But since you have that dollar in your pocket, you might take a chance and pick something at random. You desperately need something to drink, and you have no other options. So you take a chance.

Why? Because your thirst is more important, more urgent than your dollar bill.

A Salesman’s Journey

I’ve sold lots of different stuff over the course of my career. Everything from warranties to watches. I loved it. The rush of closing a deal. The battle of wits and wills when overcoming customer objections. The competition between peers and with myself

At one point, I felt like I could sell anything to anyone.

Then, Harry Browne smacked me across the face with his painfully simple, brutally powerful book, The Secret of Selling Anything.

The question is often asked, do salespeople sell, or do customers buy? I always held to the position that salespeople sell. When transactions take place, the success is 90% due to the ability of the salesperson.

Reading Browne’s book, I found out that I was wrong. I was introduced to what Browne referred to as the “universal fallacy:”

“The universal fallacy is the belief that an individual would willingly accept something unprofitable to himself.

“No individual will give up some of his own resources for something he values less. When you think he will, you’re headed for failure. He may very well make an exchange that you would never make — but he will not willingly make an exchange that will lower his values.” (Author’s emphasis)

No one willingly does what she does not want to do.

Jonathan Edwards, considered by many to be the one of the greatest minds in America’s history, had this to say about making decisions: people “always act according to the strongest inclination they have at the moment of choice.”

Edwards is saying that, from the options available to us, we always choose what has the strongest, most desirable emotional impact on our lives in that moment. Period.

Back to the Vending Machine

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot.

If you were responsible for the sale of just ONE of the items in the vending machine, how would you get the guy in the middle of the desert to spend his dollar on your product?

For starters, you’d make sure that he knows it’s a refreshing liquid.

In our example, where does the selling power come from? It comes from the thirst of the guy in the desert.

On the other hand, could you sell salty potato chips to him? I don’t care how good a salesperson you put on that job, he’s not going to have much success.

We see that people buy what they want. Selling is (or at least it should be recognized and treated as) giving people what they want. Helping them satisfy their desires and needs.

With the vending machine, you’re not selling without selling. You’re selling without being obnoxious. There’s a major difference!

Guess what. Your salesmanship is nothing more than increasing the likelihood that your product in that vending machine is the one that gets picked.

The argument isn’t so much whether salespeople sell or customers buy. It’s both! The desire comes from the customer. It is the job of the salesperson or marketer to help the customer make the best decision.

My Talk with Mark Fox

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Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mark Fox, CEO of Sly as a Fox, LLC and author of Da Vinci and the 40 Answers. He’s one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of purposeful creativity. Oh, and he is former Chief Engineer on the Space Shuttle.

He enlightened me for 35 minutes and let me record the conversation.

Here’s why it matters to you.

We’ve talked about how improving your offer will improve the response you get from your marketing and sales propositions. Mark gives two of the best examples I’ve ever heard of “better than money back” guarantees. One involves a million dollar payout.

You can definitely learn something from these ideas.

The broader context of our discussion was how to become creative on purpose instead of having to wait for your muse to show up. We’re all well-accustomed to accidental creativity. But what if you could reproduce those times of inspiration predictably, on demand?

You’d start to see problems and obstacles dissolve right before your eyes.

On top of all that, I make a total anus out of myself in the first 5 minutes of the recording. I was so embarrassed I almost canceled the rest of the talk. I’m getting over my pride, because there is some really great content that I think you’ll benefit greatly from hearing. It’s worth the shame.

Check out the audio here.

You don’t want to miss this.

P.S. While you’re at it, you should go to Mark’s site. His is one of the only newsletters I haven’t unsubscribed from. He’s also offering the full text of Da Vinci and the 40 Answers in PDF form for free. No opt-in required.

Selling Cash for Profit

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I think I’m in the wrong business…

These guys are selling $2 bills for ten bucks!

I’m not going to talk about the 9/11 World Trade Center “bombing” or “conspiracy” (at least not today). Nor will I address quantitative easing, hyper-inflation or the plummeting value of the American dollar.

I just want to briefly talk about selling $4 worth of money for $10.

Do you believe someone is getting the short end of the stick in this deal? Is someone ripping someone off?

The fact is that this is a mutually profitable transaction for everyone. Both the company selling the bills and those who buy them are getting what they want. The sellers are creating revenue and the buyers are getting commemorative collectibles.

I think everyone knows what they’re getting into in this deal. It’s not like the older brother tricking the younger sibling into trading her dirty, dull quarter for his shiny new penny. Those who make this purchase know they’re paying 2.5 times more than the monetary value of the product.

And they’re happy to do it.

Good copywriters and marketers have been said to “sell money at a discount” to their clients. But I gotta admit, selling NEW money at a marked-up price is somewhat new to me.